[Mere reference to background art herein should not be construed as an admission that such art constitutes common general knowledge in relation to the invention.]
Land levelling is a process commonly used in the agricultural industry to improve various characteristics of a terrain. Typically, the existing terrain of an agricultural field or proposed agricultural field is surveyed to record the existing three dimensional shape of the land surface. Based on the surveyed terrain data, a desired terrain surface; is created which improves its characteristics for agricultural production e.g. drainage. The desired terrain surface is comprised of non-overlapping planar polygons that typically have side lengths of 100 meters or more. The outline of the polygons is manually defined by the designer and each polygon typically covers a significant portion of the desired terrain surface e.g. greater than 20%. The number of polygons is typically less than 10 per desired terrain surface because any more than this and the complexity of the traditional design process increases dramatically. This usual outcome of desired terrain surfaces comprised of 10 or so polygons can have an adverse affect, because as each polygon is planar and a lot of unnecessary earthmoving may be necessary to obtain the desired terrain surface.
Designing the desired terrain surface can be a complex task requiring the designer to consider many different variables in order to achieve the best terrain surface. Furthermore, the greater the detail required and the more polygons used greatly increase the complexity of the final design. Earthmoving equipment is then used to achieve the desired contour of the terrain.
The amount of earth moving required, namely, the amount of cut and fill which must be accomplished, and whether or not earth will need to be moved onto or removed from the terrain to accomplish the desired terrain surface are important factors to be considered when designing a desired terrain surface as they can greatly affect the cost of a land levelling project. Consequently, it is preferable to minimise the movement of earth required to achieve the desired terrain surface.
Some systems are proposed that optimise the terrain for rowed crops. However, optimisations for rowed crops require water drainage to occur in a single direction. This type of optimisation results in a lot of earthmoving being required to alter certain features of the terrain to allow the drainage to occur in the requisite direction.
It is an aim of this invention to provide a method and system for optimising land levelling designs which overcomes or ameliorates one or more of the disadvantages or problems described above, or which at least provides a useful alternative.